


ask and ye shall receive

by peradi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), M/M, merry christmas have some shameless fluff, resistance cuddle piles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 14:11:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13148328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/pseuds/peradi
Summary: Rey attempts to shoulder the burden of her Force-bond with Kylo Ren alone. It goes as well as you might think.(Or: Rey gets by with a little help from her friends.)





	ask and ye shall receive

**Author's Note:**

> so here's some shameless fluff. merry christmas!

Leia picks Baher because it is isolated on the Outer Rim, far from everything. She could have gone for Albion VI – guarded by nebula storms that make entering the galaxy all but impossible for all but the most determined (read: crazy) pilots – but she doesn’t, because what is the point in a base that no potential ally can find?

The fact that Baher is very much like Ahch-To is only a bonus. As she walks along the pebbled beach, she thinks she hears her brother say: _nothing is truly a coincidence, dearest sister, nothing at all; the Force holds everything together._

When she looks towards the source of the voice there’s nothing there, only the fluster of whipcord grass.

“Luke, I’m glad you have found peace. Really, I am. But I could really do with some guidance.”

The sky is bloated with dense, grey cloud and the rain falls in dribs and drabs. It very rarely stops raining here, which makes it fortunate that the Rebel Base that the Resistance has commandeered is largely inside the island, accessible by a series of tunnels hidden among the rocks and cliffs. Plenty of entrances and exits: Crait has taught Leia much.

They have been here two days. Lando Calrissian – that absurd, star-touched, gorgeous _wonderful_ man – got in contact twelve hours after they had fled Crait with nothing more than forty eight survivors and anywhere between four and eighty six porgs (they don’t stay still long enough to count, and seem to breed every time Leia turns around). He’d given them coordinates and an account with the Interstellar Corellian Bank.

You rebuild. It’s what you do. Leia’s no stranger to the process, though she does think she is getting a little too old to be forging hope from ashes.

And yet here she is. She walks from one end of the beach to the other, because she’s the last one left, and the weight of their hope threatens to snap her spine. She has to take a moment to breathe, to centre herself, to shore herself up against the bombardment of the universe. There’s an old Alderaanian story, about a man called Atlas who bore the heavens on his back. When she was little she would say _well why did he put up with it_. And now she knows. Because sometimes you just have to take the hand that you are dealt and work with it.

You do your duty, even if it wears you down to bone and sinew.

Han used to get so _frustrated_ with her. _You hate politics_ , he would say. _You hate the Republic, you hate democracy – Princess, you can lie to everyone but you can’t lie to me._

It was their oldest argument because he could not understand her –  _why don’t you leave_ –and she could not understand him ( _why do you always leave_ ) and they would snarl and circle, never wanting to separate, unable to stay.

But Han died. And here she is. She hasn’t had time to mourn. She’s not sure she ever will.

_You’re not their only hope. This Resistance doesn’t rest entirely with you, my darling sister._

This time she _distinctly_ hears Luke’s voice. She feels his breath, warm on her ear. But, of course, when she looks around there is nothing there. Only the sea, stretching iron grey fingers up towards the cliff, leaving foamy residue when it withdraws.

 

\--

 

Rey has got her own quarters. She doesn’t want them. Leia gave them to her, because she’s a _Jedi_ , because she’s _special_ and yes everyone else bunks up in twos and threes and fours – there’s really not much space on Baher – but she has her own room, her own bed, her own drawers. She hates how _empty_ is. She hates how barren her shelves are, once she’s lined up her possessions: three nice rocks, a quarterstaff, a spare tunic, a medpack.

Finn and Poe and Rose share a room. Finn and Poe in one twin bunk, Rose on the bottom of another: there’s  a fourth one, a spare one, and though she never means to outright read their minds she can feel the shape of their intention. If she asked for it, she’d have it. She’d have three friends to play sabacc with, and drink that noxious booze Poe’s so good at making, and she’d discuss engineering with Rose, and it would all be wonderful.

But she doesn’t. She _can’t._ Because that first night after Crait, she’d slept, and she’d dreamed. She and Kylo Ren stood by a burning building. She hadn’t had to ask to know that it was Luke’s Jedi Academy, burning to shadow and ash. And she hadn’t had to ask to know that Kylo Ren hadn’t finished killing everyone inside before setting it ablaze. She heard the screams.

The fire had cast wild, dancing shadows on his face; lighting up his black eyes like a missile-strike. He offered her his hands: both of them, palms up and fingers spread.

“Rey,” he said. “Rey, my offer stands. Do you know that? Luke Skywalker is dead. He left you. They will all leave you in the end. They don’t care about you.”

“And you do?” she spat.

“I _know_ you. Lost, beautiful girl. I know you.”

“You don’t know _anything_. You’re a monster.”

“Am I?” He gestured to the burning Temple. “I am but what they made me.”

Rey swallowed thickly, closed her eyes, _focused_. The ground under her feet shifted and changed; the heat of the fire encompassed them, opened up, becoming a hard, blue sky; and when she opened her eyes they stood in Jakku’s red sands. Kylo Ren, confused, cast around.

“What is this?”

“I wanted to show you something,” Rey said. Her heart leapt into her throat and stayed there; fear ran rancid through her veins. _It is a dream_ , she told herself, _and he cannot hurt me here._

_I do not want to hurt you –_

Rey ignored him, span on her heel and marched away. She didn’t look back, but she heard him follow, sand crunching under his boots. With the logic of dreams, the dunes shifted and changed, revealing a scrawny girl and a scrawnier desert thing that looked halfway between a lizard and a dog.

The little girl had a chunk of bread. She tore it in half, tossed part to the lizard-dog.

“It was starving. So was she. But she fed it. She didn’t have _anyone_ but she was still kind. Because she _chose_.”

The lizard-dog and the girl faded away. Rey turned back to Kylo Ren. He had his head quirked on one side, regarding her like a hawk might watch an overly confident mouse: curious, perturbed, and _hungry_.

“Are you showing me why I should redeem myself?”

“I was raised by the desert. My parents sold me for scrap. You had all the love in the world so _hang_ your excuses. You weren’t a monster because they made you, you were one because you chose.”

“I was a frightened boy and your precious Luke,” Kylo Ren spat the word out, his lips curling back from his teeth; his face turning scarlet with rage. The sand underfoot heated up; the sun vanished behind a cloud of dense, choking smoke. “Your Luke tried to kill me --”

“You murdered children. You scum. You _animal_ . I will stop you, do you understand? I will find you and I will _stop you –“_

He grabbed at her chin, his metal-clad fingers biting into her cheeks. “You will join me. You _will_ . _I can take what I want –“_

Rey woke with her hands bloody from smacking the wall. If Finn had been there –

And so she sleeps alone, in her room which is hers and hers alone.

 

\--

 

“Oh _God_ ,” says Finn. “This is the worst thing. This is the _absolute worst_.”

“You fought Kylo Ren,” says Rey. “You faced the First Order’s might.”

“Yeah, and this is worse.”

“Worse than Phasma in the shower?” grins Poe.

“Worse!”

There are umpteen tunnels leading in and out of the base, but all but one of them are infested with a local predator – something best described as a spider-sea-monkey-centipede thing – lots of legs, lots of teeth. No one’s entirely sure what they eat down here in the dark –maybe algae, but Rey’s pretty sure that they subsist entirely on spite.

She, Poe and Finn are part of the Killing Centipede Thing Taskforce. They’re in one of the north west tunnels; it’s too narrow to permit more than two abreast, and lit by dim, flickering hololamps.

Rose, bringing up the rear on her crutches, forms the entirety of the Fixing Hololamps taskforce.

One of the centipede-things skitters past; Rey brings her quarterstaff down on its head. It explodes into green gunk and Finn retches.

“The worst,” he says, again.

They continue to climb. The steps are surprisingly good quality, cut straight into the stone. Rey wonders who made them; which part of the Rebel alliance. On the one hand, it is tremendously useful to have such an array of bases scattered over the galaxy. On the other, it is sobering to be reminded of the scale of the Rebel Alliance: reaching into every galaxy, every species; bases tucked away in every quadrant. The Resistance, as of this morning, numbers one hundred and twenty eight. Not including the porgs.

But you rebuild. What else can you do?

“Rey, how long left?” wheedles Finn. Rey thins her lips, makes a dismayed sound in her throat.

“Can’t see light. Probably another – hour?”

Finn groans. Poe peeks over Rey’s shoulder at the rapidly growing patch of light they’re approaching.

“Yeah Finn, we’re looking at a good two hours here. Can’t see shit.”

“No!”

Finn leans forwards, pressing up against Rey as he does so – and doesn’t _that_ send a thrill and a shudder through her – and sees how close they are to the exit. “Hey!” he says, and then barks laughter. Rey leans back against him. And he is warm and comforting, and his heartbeat is sold and good against her spine.

Here, in the salt-reeking darkness, with centipede-monster gunge matting her hair and drying on her face: here, she is happy.

 

\--

 

But then they finish up the tunnel. When they clamber out, shoving through a thicket, they find themselves at the top of a cliff. The sun is sliding below the horizon; the rain has stopped, and the clouds have parted enough to allow runnels of sunset colour through. The wind skips over the grass. Rey inhales, long and deep.

“It’s getting dark. We should get back to base. Force, I am _tired_ ,” says Poe.

“Me too,” chimes in Rose. “Dr Caladonia’s let me out of the medward on the condition that I don’t overexert myself.”

“I need a shower,” says Finn, mournfully picking a lump of congealing alien blood out of his hair.

“Yeah, sure. Who fancies helping me with that X Wing though?”

“The broken one?”

“Yeah! The General said that we could probably get her up in the air with a bit of elbow grease.”

“Rey, we can work on your X Wing death trap tomorrow,” Finn says. A yawn splits his face open.

Rey leads them back over the clifftop, through another recently cleared tunnel – _because I need the fresh air_ , she says, leaving out the fact that this route adds twenty minutes to their journey which is twenty minutes she will not be sleeping –and back into base.

“We should have a drink,” she says as they enter the hangar. “Dameron, do you have any Starbright gin left?”

“That’s for special occasions, Rey,” says Poe, splaying his fingers through his hair, grinning ruefully. “And normally I’d be game, but I am just _so tired_.”

Rey’s heart quickens; her smile tightens. “Finn? Rose?”

“Sorry Rey,” says Rose. “Next time! I think the doctor will literally tie me to the hospital bed if she thinks I’m not taking care of myself.”

Finn’s looking at Rey strangely, sharp and _knowing_ , and Rey pastes her smile on another layer.

“Rey,” he says. The Force around him crackles with worry. “Are you okay?”

“ _Yes_.”

Kylo Ren is her responsibility; hers alone. Finn has a scar on his back, jagged as lightning and dark as the grave. She’s not going to let him get anywhere near Ren because next time, it will be more than a scar.

She knows: Ren has shown her.

Next time he sees Finn, he’s going to flay him alive.

And so Rey will make sure that he never does.

  


\--

 

That night, she dreams she’s in a bar.

“This is _new_ ,” she says.

Rey’s not the best arbiter of taste – she did grow up on Jakku, land of function over beauty, and her idea of good food is anything marginally edible, and her only qualifier for good alcohol is it doesn’t burn _all_ the lining from your throat as you swallow it – but she’s confident enough to rate this bar as _tacky_. There’s a lot of red and gold, and altogether too much velvet. It’s lit by a chandelier in the shape of a constellation: stars and planets glowing, spinning around each other.

“Um.”

Kylo Ren is behind the bar, mixing cocktails. One portion of something bright blue, three shots of something glittering: then he slaps the lid on the shaker, using the Force to spin it in a whirligig of bright copper around his head.

“I thought I’d try a different technique,” he says. He smiles like he has been practicing in a mirror.

“I’d rather you took me to the Jedi Temple again,” says Rey. “This is...creepy.”

“I’m _trying_ here. Humour me.” He waves his hand: the shaker floats over, emptying itself into two crystal flutes. “Besides, would you rather see my original idea? I was going to show you what will happen to your friends when I find them – what you can avoid, if only you join me.”

“I’ll humour you,” says Rey hurriedly, pulling out a barstool. She sits down, tucks her feet under her.

“Good,” he says, pushing one cocktail towards her. She takes a sip. “What do you think?”

“It’s –sweet?”

“And the bar?”

“It’s certainly... _something_.”

“Bit tacky, isn’t it? I modelled it on a bar from Canto Bight. Do you know much about Canto Bight?”

“Yes,” Rey says curtly. “Finn told me about it.”

“Ah yes –Finn. The _boy._  He’s the one who is in love with – what’s her name? – the little engineer? Raast?”

“Rose.”

“That’s it. I’m sure the boy told you all about it –how it is built upon blood money, how the evil arms traders sold weapons to the Empire, and then to the First Order, and grew fat with the profits of war. But did he tell you –“

“That they sold to the Resistance as well? Yes. Of course he did.”

One of the bottles explodes. Kylo’s smile slips a little before he wrenches it back into place.

“Ah. Well –“

“You didn’t think he would tell me that, did you? You thought he would lie to me, to keep me with the Resistance.” Rey nudges at his mind, reads the shape of his thoughts before he can stop her. “You’re underestimating him. That’ll be your downfall.”

Kylo’s lips stretch wider: he shows his teeth, and it is the furthest thing from a smile.

“Canto Bight is built on the bones of the dead. The Rebel Alliance and the Empire let it fester and grow. We could burn it down. We could start again.”

Rey looks over her shoulder. The bar is starting to lose its lustre; the gold gilt turning green at the edges, peeling in strips. Velvet sofas grow white, furry mould and cracks spiderweb across the ceiling.

“You don’t care about the victims of war,” she says, turning back to him. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“That’s not true.”

Another bottle smashes behind him.

“I care about you. It pains me to consider hurting you.”

He’s not lying; Rey thinks that she would be able to tell if he could. “Just me,” she says. “Out of all the people, in all the universe, you only care about me. Forgive me, but that does not make you any less despicable. In fact, it makes you _worse_ . Because if you _are_ capable of care, if you _are_ capable of understanding the Light then it makes it even worse that you have turned from it.”

“The Light depends on where you stand –“

“Spare me. There are shades of grey, but _objectively_ speaking _murdering_ people is wrong.”

“What happened to ‘there is light in you yet’?”

“I tried. You threw it in my face. I’m not going to keep sacrificing myself on the off chance you change your mind.”

“So I get one chance. Some mercy. I’m not going to give up on you Rey. I believe that you can be saved from this toxic path. The Light burns up everything in the end. The Dark swallows everything. You and I, Rey, we can forge a new path, a better one –“

“No. We can’t. We won’t. There is no _we_ , Ren.”

Another spattering of bottles explode, sending glass cascading. Kylo’s not even pretending to smile anymore: his teeth show sharp and white, his lip curled.

“I am _trying_ ,” he says, “to approach you _kindly_  –“

“I don’t want your kindness.”

“You want to kill me.”

“I want to stop you –“

“Liar. You want to kill me. I feel your hate singing in you. Your friends have lied to you; I don’t want you to hate me. I am not the Emperor. I want –“

“My friends have never told me that you want me to hate me,” says Rey. “In fact, we never speak of you at all.”

It’s a lie, of course, and Kylo knows it. But even the _idea_ is enough to make him snap. He slams his fists into the bar, which cracks straight open. All the bottles explode off the shelves in a glittering storm; fractures skid up towards the ceiling, and then the walls collapse entirely. Blistering wind screams past them, throwing away the rest of the illusion, and then they stand on a clifftop. The sea snarls and thrashes beneath them; lightning rends the sky apart with greedy, crooked fingers.

Rey’s still holding her flute. She flings it into his face, but it dissolves it into a silvery smear before it gets there.

“I won’t join you. I won’t ever join you, no matter what you pretend you are,” she screams, struggling to make herself heard over the howling storm.

Kylo Ren ignites his lightsabre. “You are _nothing_ , you are _nobody_ , you are nothing to anyone but me –“

Rey’s hands are full of the solid, familiar weight of her quarterstaff. “You filthy liar, you _liar_ \--”

 

\--

 

“What are you drawing?”

“I dreamed about a bar on Canto Bight.”

“Really?” Rose quirks her head on one side. “That wasn’t what we saw.”

“No, not at all. That bar was white and gold, mostly,” says Finn. Rey pushes her drawing towards him.

“Strange,” she says. “I thought that it was.”

“Why?”

“I just --it was a dream. I just assumed that it was.”

Poe tugs the drawing towards himself, taking a deep swig of kaf. Rey resists the urge to grab the paper back: it’s taken her a little while to grasp the fact that Resistance fighters treat possessions slightly more carelessly than she’s used to. In Jakku, touching someone else’s scavenge is grounds for homocide. Here, it is expected.

“No, that’s not Canto Bight. Looks like the Golden Juniper on Hosnian Prime. I went there like...twice. Very expensive. The General used to have parties there.” His forehead creases. “You dreamed about this. What did you dream?”

“Yes,” says Rey. Her stomach curdles. “I was just...there. If the General was dreaming about it –thinking about it –I would have picked up on that.” The lies trip off her tongue. “Force-users...we would hear each other’s dreams. It’s just how it is.”

Poe shrugs, passes her the paper back.

“Odd. It was a lovely place, back in the day.”

“I can’t imagine the General throwing parties,” Finn says, pouring himself a glass of milk. Ever since seeing Luke harvest milk from the slimy sea creatures on Ahch-To, Rey’s avoided it like the plague. She didn’t think it was possible for her to find a food she doesn’t like and yet here we are. It’s a sign of how much _better_ things have got: in Jakku she didn’t have the luxury of refusing anything remotely edible.

Finn drinks; she thinks of saggy sea cow tits, wrinkles her nose, sticks to kaf.

“Well, I don’t think she ever liked them,” Poe says. “She had to do it though, because part of politics is socialising, fundraising, all that nonsense. She’d have her whole family there –“

He stops, and silence sucks at the edge of the conversation.

“I can’t imagine Han at a party either,” Finn says, after a few heartbeats.

“He used to call himself Mr Organa, Royal Consort, and bargain for free drinks,” Poe says. “He’d beat everyone at sabacc.”

“He’d be fun.”

“He was.”

“And –“ Rey swallows around the lump in her throat. “And Kylo?”

“Kylo – Kylo was Ben back then, of course. He was always a creepy little shit,” says Poe. He’s got this distant look on his face; he’s not looking anyone in the face; instead he’s peering back into the past. Then he shakes his head. “No. He wasn’t that creepy. He was...shy, and awkward, and always a bit too much. Too loud, or too quiet. Like he couldn’t work out who he was –“

“Like he couldn’t balance himself,” Rey chimes in.

“No.”

Rey sketches a few more details into the drawing: long thin lines behind the bar which could be a shadow, or a man, or a trick of the light.

 

\--

 

“Why can I not reach you when you are awake?” Kylo Ren muses, a few nights later. They’re in Rey’s hut on Ahch-To, sitting on opposite sides of a fire. “I have tried, but it’s like there is something _blocking_ me.”

The fire crackles and pops. Rey stares into the embers to avoid meeting his eyes.

“Luke is dead,” she says. “He’s not gone.”

“He doesn’t care about you enough to protect you,” says Kylo, flippant and cruel as a child. Rey shows her teeth.

“You’re not even a good liar, you know that don’t you? He may not speak to me –“

“If he cared about you, would he not have stayed with you?”

“You gave up on the people who loved you. That doesn’t mean I will.”

“They gave up on me first.”

He’s _pouting._ Rey can hear it in his voice.

“We’ve been through this.”

She snaps her fingers. A blaster materialises in her palm.

“Oh not this _again_ –“

She stands in one effortless motion, snaps her hand up, and fires. The hut falls away; Kylo Ren vanishes; and she’s standing in orange-gold dunes, watching a rocket take off. A little girl struggles in Unkar Platt’s grip.

“They left you. Everyone you love will leave you. Apart from me.”

His breath is hot in her ear; it stinks of blood.

“Are you saying you love me?” she says, her jaw set so hard it hurts.

He rests his hand on her hip, pulls her back against him, mantling her like a krayt dragon with its prey. The tip of his nose brushes against her hair as he inhales; his hand skids across her stomach, up her chest, resting on her clavicle; his long fingers spread out in a fan.

“I am the only one who will never leave you, Rey,” he says, his voice hitching. He nuzzles against the curve of her neck. “Please, _please –_ we’re the same, we’re both the same.”

He kisses her, just on her pulsing jugular –

 

\--

 

“Rey! _REY!”_

Someone is above her, _someone is above her_ , and Rey lashes out with the Force, scooping the intruder up and slamming them against the wall.

“Get out of my _head_ ,” she howls, sitting bolt upright, holding out her hand for her quarterstaff; it thuds into her palm, familiar and lethal, and she snaps to her feet and –

Finn stares at her: his nose bloody, his eyes wide.

“Rey,” he says, again, and that had been his voice, his body over hers.

“Finn, I am so so sorry,” she says, dropping her staff and running to him. The door swooshes open and BB-8 rolls in, followed shortly by Poe.

_Friend-Rey, your heartrate is elevated; this is a sign of distress. Where is the danger?_

BB-8’s zapper pokes out, sparking blue. He’s ready to fight and die on her behalf –this droid, this tiny droid, this tiny little helpless thing will fight for her because she is loved, she is so loved and Kylo Ren is wrong.

Rey bursts into tears. When she was growing up in Jakku, she was told that when you had starved for days you couldn’t eat a full meal at once, because your stomach wouldn’t be able to cope.

She’s been starved of love for so long, and here she is, drowning in it. Dying from it.

Finn holds out his arms. She throws herself against him; he rocks backwards with her weight, but holds her. He’s the still point in the turning world.  

“I’m sorry,” she sniffles, wiping her nose on his shirt. “I’m sorry. I’ve been –I wanted to keep you safe. I wanted to keep you away from him.”

“Rey, we’re worried sick about you. You won’t stop working. You haven’t been sleeping. You keep pulling away.”

( _we have a spare bunk_ Finn had said, and it’s only with the lens of hindsight that Rey recognises the desperation in his voice)

“I can’t get him out of my _head_ ,” Rey says, pressing herself closer to Finn, splaying her free hand through her hair, wishing that she could pull her scalp away in chunks and wash the inside of her skull clean. “You don’t know what it’s like, he’s there, he’s just _in there--”_

 _“Actually_ ,” says Poe, sitting down, leaning against her wall. He doesn’t approach her, but she feels his Force presence: as steady and calm as a great lake. “I do know what that’s like. He gets inside your head and he rummages around, and you don’t know how to get him out. He interrogated me, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“How did you deal with it?”

“I still am. It’s not been that long. But I told people, and I got help, and I didn’t try and shoulder the burden to myself. I’m never alone. None of us are.”

“And,” Finn adds. The Force around him sparks with fury and it takes Rey a moment to process that he’s angry at _her._ “And he’s not your responsibility. He’s not your problem. You ran off to try and redeem him and almost got yourself killed and you can’t do that again, you _can’t_.”

“I know he can’t be redeemed –“

“But you still act like he’s your problem! Like you’re the only one who can handle him! That’s the sort of thinking that broke Luke Skywalker – he thought he was the only one who could deal with this Force Jedi bullshit and it broke him, and I won’t let it break you too.” Finn swallows thickly, presses a kiss to her temple.

“He said he was in love with me,” Rey says. Her voice is very small.

Finn’s arm tightens over her shoulders.

( _I’ll kill him if he touches you –)_

_(Don’t be silly, that’s my job –)_

_(Our job, our job together. Let us help you.)_

_(It’s my –)_

“Rey,” Poe says. “In the morning, we’re going to talk to Leia. But please – let us take care of you.”

Finn kisses her temple, and then offers his hands. Both of them, palms up, fingers spread.

 _I don’t need someone to hold my hand!_ Rey had barked a lifetime ago, when she was a frightened, lonely scavenger who spent every one of day staring up at the stars, waiting for a family that would never return.

A long time ago. A lifetime ago.

She lets Finn help her to her feet.

 

\--

 

 _I want to help, I want to help, oh the poor girl the poor thing –_ Rose’s thoughts are so unfiltered and _pure_. Her Force presence is walm, balmy and Rey sighs into it, her eyes fluttering closed.

“So, uh, I said that this was your bunk –“

“I’ve got a better idea,” Rey says. “If you don’t mind sharing.”

They shove the bunks up against the walls, tug the mattresses onto the floor, spread out their duvets and create a nest. Rey curls against Finn, his heart thumping against her spine. She tucks Rose under her chin, pondering that it is nice to be taller than someone for once. The other girl is softer than anyone she’s ever been this close to –women in Jakku are lean muscle and hard bone – and she can’t help a little huff of pleasure as Rose wriggles back into the cage of her arms.

Poe curls himself around Rose’s other side, reaching over to rub his thumb up and down Rey’s arm. His smile is as bright as the sunrise and it makes Rey’s stomach flip right over.

There are all sorts of things she needs to unpack here; a torrent of emotion that she needs to process. But right now, right here, she is warm and safe and loved.

Everything else can wait.

 

\--

 

“Rey,” says Kylo Ren. “I want to talk to –“

“Nope,” Rey snaps, pulling a blaster out of nowhere  – it is her dream, she can do what she wants – and shoots him in the Force-damn face.

 

\--

 

In her sleep, Rey smiles.


End file.
